Collection of 8,000 photos of early Sask. goes digital

An Arcola man is putting together Saskatchewan’s history, one photograph at a time.

Seventy-nine-year-old Adrian Paton has assembled over 8,000 photos showcasing the early years of the province’s history.

Paton started the collecting the pictures as a genealogical project, but it didn’t take long for him to branch out to local history, and then instead of searching for photos, people started bringing them directly to him.

The photos, mostly taken by people in the southeast part of the province, depict rural life from the start to the middle of the 20th century.

Keith Carlson, a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said it’s helping him get a sense of settler life.

Nearly 700 of the photos in Paton’s collection have now been scanned and digitized as part of a project by the U of S, and the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society.

Photos from the collection can now be found online on the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society’s website. The gallery is still a work in project, and more photos, background information, and audio files will be added to the project eventually to make it a more comprehensive look back through time.

Photos

History professor Keith Carlson and history student Eric Story look at one of over 7,000 photos depicting Saskatchewan history collected by Adrian Paton.